


sunk cost fallacy

by orphan_account



Category: Smile For Me (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Post-Good End, brief mention of a panic attack, general ennui and angst on the part of kamal, i mention kamal and habit fucking in the vaguest possible terms, i wrote this while listening to rawnald gregory erikson the second by strfkr, kamal refuses to think about his problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 10:01:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19721407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: "individuals commit the sunk cost fallacy when they continue a behavior or endeavor as a result of previously invested resources (time, money or effort.)"kamal character study that got out of hand.





	sunk cost fallacy

Kamal isn’t sure when he started feeling this way. If he’s being honest with himself (which he rarely is.) It probably started before the Habitat. This lingering feeling of ennui had been a background to most of his life, ever since he graduated from college. He didn’t mind his job.  He was able to find work relatively easily in the city, but he always had this longing for something more . Maybe it was loneliness; he never had a roommate, his parents rarely called, and he was too busy trying to get by to start dating. It was more trouble than it was worth anyways, especially for someone as ‘overly sensitive’ (in the words of his mother) as he was. Kamal hated rejection, was too afraid of it to put himself out there most of the time. He wasn’t sure that was the problem, though. It felt like more than just a simple desire for a meaningful relationship. Some sort of abiding longing for something more than what he had. That might’ve been why he moved. 

Small town life didn’t suit him as well as he had hoped. The only dentist’s office was a 2 hour commute away, and he didn’t have a driver's license. (He never had any reason to get one; taking the subway was cheaper, easier, and much more convenient.) So continuing down that route was out of the question. He bounced around jobs for a while, working as a secretary for a couple of years.Then as a shift manager at a hardware store. It wasn’t great, but it paid the bills. Still, that feeling lingered. It scared him. He didn’t want to end up like his dad, working the same customer service job at Macy’s until he retired. He didn’t want to waste his life just going through the motions. 

Kamal had just been laid off a few weeks before when he saw the ad in the jobs section. It read “asistant needed!!!!! **!** ” and was chock full of spelling errors, but that almost made it more intriguing. It was vague, just asking for somebody with a “gud work ethyc” and “medikal expereince” who didn’t mind long hours. Any other day he might’ve just brushed it off as some sort of weird scam, but he’d been so tired of everything lately. Tired of routine. Plus, even if it was a scam, it would be a good story to tell. So he called.

It wasn’t so bad at first. Boris (who liked to be called “Dr. Habit” even though Kamal never saw any certification that he had a PHD or MD or anything remotely similar) had a sort of puppyish enthusiasm for everything that was almost infectious. Yeah, he was prone to mood swings and never fully explained what he was trying to do with the whole habitat thing, but he’d had worse bosses. Plus he was paying him way more than he should. All Kamal really had to do was clean up sometimes, help with website maintenance, and eventually help with the admissions process. Habit did the interviews, but Kamal was the one who did the tours and explained things as best as he could. It actually went pretty smoothly for a while. Habit was forgetful and kept weird hours, but since Kamal had such a small workload to begin with he didn’t have any trouble picking up the slack. 

Then Habit started to get worse. He was locking himself in his office, working for hours and hours on something that he wouldn’t tell Kamal about. That was frustrating enough, but when he wasn’t doing that he was completely despondent. He cried at the drop of a hat, sometimes for no reason at all. He had already guessed Habit had some serious unresolved issues when he started working there, but this was beyond the pale. It was sad, really. Even when Habit got snappy and passive aggressive, it was never with him, and there was something so pathetic about it that he couldn’t bring himself to leave. If Kamal was being honest with himself (which, again, he rarely is) it made him feel wanted. Like somebody needed him.  Sure, it wasn’t healthy to be the person who made sure his boss ate or the person who held him until he stopped sobbing and dry heaving after he heard a certain song on the radio. It also certainly broke some sort of code of ethics, but it’s not like he could just leave the guy hanging like that. He told himself that maybe things would get better if he tried hard enough.

It wasn’t really the teeth thing that made him give up. That was the easiest explanation, but things had been bad for a while. After Habit aired that PSA about Wallus that made the guy start living in the wall, it was only a matter of time before he turned on Kamal. He was the only person who Habit saw on a regular basis anyways. Kamal tried not to take it personally, he tried really hard, but it was too much. Maybe his Mom was right about him being too sensitive. Deep down he knows he probably would’ve left even if Habit didn’t yell at him about “poor dental hygiene” for a solid 20 minutes. If it wasn’t that, it would’ve been something else. 

He was scared. Not of Habit, because he knew that he wouldn’t hurt a fly, at least at that point. Scared that if he stuck around it wouldn’t make a difference. How would he be able to deal with that? Putting all that effort into trying to help somebody just to have it end up being worthless? Kamal wouldn't have been able to deal with it. He still isn’t able to deal with it. Damn sunk cost fallacy. He hated himself for leaving though. Habit was probably trying to drive him away on purpose, subconsciously or not. Trying to reaffirm the bias that nobody could understand him, that nobody appreciated what he did for them. Trying to get everything out of the way so he could do what he wanted to do.

But then.. How was that florist’s kid able to help Habit when Kamal wasn’t? How could 10 minutes of talking it through stop Habit in his tracks? Was Kamal really that ineffective? Was he really that bad at his job? Would he have been able to stop everything before it happened if he had just said the right things? Or was it because Habit didn’t  _ really _ want to do it? Was it because he got to the edge of that cliff and realized he needed somebody to tell him to stop? Could that someone have been Kamal, if he had just stopped being a coward and gone up there to talk to him?

Whatever. It doesn’t matter now. Somebody else took care of what Kamal couldn’t. Story of his life. And life doesn’t have a redo button. 

Sometimes, though, he stays up late and lies in bed and thinks. He almost misses it, taking care of someone like that. It made him feel like he was important, like he really mattered to someone. He almost misses Habit, or at least what they had, as ill defined and unspoken as it was. But he also doesn’t think it wouldn’t be good for either of them to try and reconnect. It’s been a while, but it takes longer than that to deal with whatever unresolved issues Habit had. At least, Kamal assumes it does. He wouldn’t know.

When the email comes, he tries so hard not to open it. He really does. He turns his computer off and tells himself he’s going to go to bed and not think about it, but two hours later he’s writing a response. Habit’s spelling has gotten better. That’s not a real sign of growth or healing or anything, but it’s something. It’s the only excuse he can give himself. 

They get coffee. Well, Kamal gets coffee. Boris just orders an ice water and carefully sips at it. They talk, but it’s pretty menial. Chit-chat. Kamal asks questions about what he’s been up to (mainly therapy and gardening, apparently) and stuff like that. It’s definitely awkward, but not so much so that Kamal feels the urge to excuse himself to the bathroom and climb out a window, something that he’s done on more than one occasion. Boris offers to drive him home, and he says yes for some reason. He tells himself that it’s a long walk back, and it’s getting hot outside. Late spring. He still hasn’t gotten his drivers license. The car smells like bubblegum air freshener, and there’s a kitten bobblehead stuck to the dashboard. They drive in silence.

He should probably be surprised when Boris leans over to the passenger side and kisses him, but he isn’t. He should probably be surprised when he leads Boris by the hand up to his apartment, but he isn’t. He wants it to be spur of the moment, a bad decision, but it isn’t. Kamal can’t come up with a good excuse this time, or even a passable one. He doesn’t want to.

It is what it is, which is just two profoundly lonely people doing what lonely people do. Neither of them are particularly good at it, but it’s not rushed. Maybe, if he were a different sort of person, Kamal might describe it as “tender,” but that’s a stupid word to apply to sex. An embarrassing word. 

Afterwards, when they’re lying on Kamal’s bed, Boris rolls over and looks at him, and Kamal is suddenly overwhelmed with a feeling that he can’t quite describe. It’s different, not the kind of melancholy that he’s used to, and it makes him feel like he’s suddenly caught underwater and can’t get to the surface. He chokes up, presses his face against the pillow, but at least he can say he didn’t start crying until Boris puts one cold hand on the small of his back and tells him that it’s okay. Like he has any right to be the one comforting Kamal. 

A few hours later, Boris falls asleep with his head in Kamal’s lap. He finds himself absentmindedly petting his hair, and when he realizes he’s doing it he wants to smack himself. This isn’t romance. Boris needs somebody who can support him, somebody who can hold him accountable, somebody better than Kamal. This shouldn’t turn into anything other than what it is. 

But it does. Of course it does. How could Kamal let this go when he’s been building himself up to this one stupid, reckless decision for so long? Kamal can’t fix Boris just by loving him. Nobody can fix him. It’s something he just has to do himself. 

It works out, though. It’s not perfect, but it works out because they want it to. Because they need it to. Both of them. 

Damn sunk cost fallacy.

**Author's Note:**

> im in love with kamal but hes dumb as shit. comments are appreciated even if they are about how this story is bad adn i should pee my pants


End file.
